A pleasure to read and a welcome window on a world we know too little about.
Picaresque, politically shaded novel of life in 20th-century Pakistan, a country and time fading into memory and rife with nostalgia.
The good old days weren’t always so good—but they weren’t so bad, either. Yousufi, well-known in Pakistan but, at the age of 92, just emerging outside that country, delivers a rollicking epic told through the person of one Basharat Ali Farooqi, a bit of a sad sack who constantly makes tough luck for himself: “Now Basharat began to regret his foolishness: why had he loaded into a ramshackle car goods worth twice the car’s amount?” So goes a typical moment, with Basharat wishing a thief would come along and relieve him of his worries and instead courting the attention of the police on a different count. Basharat is nothing if not aspirational, though he seldom succeeds in rising to the rascally heights of his father-in-law, Qibla, who has the look of a devil about him: “His big eyes bulged from their sockets. They were always bloodshot—really bloodshot. As red as pigeon’s blood.” Fearful countenance aside, Qibla is a fellow whose schemes never quite work out according to plan, either. Caught up in the chaos of India and Pakistan at the time of the 1947 partition, Basharat, Qibla, and Yousufi’s other characters do what they can to get by, discovering that if you can’t go home again, you can’t go elsewhere, either. Yousufi writes of the most serious events with balloon-puncturing good humor, and his chapter titles alone are worth the price of admission: “Do Lizards Breastfeed?” “The Teachers Have Eaten Up the Orphanage!” “I Was Punished for the Horny Camel’s Misdeeds.” Doubtless Yousufi courted the displeasure of fundamentalists and nationalists in writing this novel, published in Urdu in 1990; the introduction, good and substantial though it is, might have done a touch more to set it in its context and discuss its reception. But that’s a quibble unworthy of Qibla.
A pleasure to read and a welcome window on a world we know too little about.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2413-0
Page Count: 574
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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